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Do SMART reads on array drives actually spin up the drives?

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I've previously been told that when UnRaid does its periodic SMART data reads that this doesn't physically spin up the drives. I would really appreciate some clarification on this as it seems in my case that the drives do in fact spin up. You can see from the syslog pasted below and the attached screenshot of my array drive (taken at the same time), that the Colored Status Indicator is green. As per the tool tip this means the drives are active and spun up, or am I missing something here?
I have also attached diagnostics taken at the same time on the off chance they are needed. Many thanks - Noob

 

Sep 23 07:03:00 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdj
Sep 23 07:07:21 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sde
Sep 23 07:07:21 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdb
Sep 23 07:07:21 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdc
Sep 23 07:07:25 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdd
Sep 23 07:07:37 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdl
Sep 23 07:07:51 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdk
Sep 23 07:17:54 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdg
Sep 23 07:18:05 TheMagicEye emhttpd: read SMART /dev/sdh
Sep 23 07:18:49 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdj
Sep 23 07:22:55 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdd
Sep 23 07:22:55 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdl
Sep 23 07:22:56 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdk
Sep 23 07:29:12 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sde
Sep 23 07:29:12 TheMagicEye emhttpd: spinning down /dev/sdb

UnRaid Disk Spin Up.jpg

themagiceye-diagnostics-20210923-0717.zip

You can look at it two different ways:

  1. the drive spins up because of the SMART read
  2. Unraid takes the opportunity to read SMART as soon as it see a drive spinning up

From personal experience, I think it is the second as I often see drives stay down for 20+ hours (not me in front of my dashboard but no temp read for that long).

 

8 hours ago, nametaken_thisonetoo said:

...as it seems in my case that the drives do in fact spin up.

 

Cant confirm this... I haven't seen this behavior yet.

  • Author
9 hours ago, ChatNoir said:

You can look at it two different ways:

  1. the drive spins up because of the SMART read
  2. Unraid takes the opportunity to read SMART as soon as it see a drive spinning up

From personal experience, I think it is the second as I often see drives stay down for 20+ hours (not me in front of my dashboard but no temp read for that long).

I understand where you are coming from, it's just that as you can see with my logs, there is nothing else going on other than a spin up for a SMART data read. So doesn't that suggest in my case the number 1  is what is happening?

Either way I'd like to understand if this if common behavior that other users also observe. My concern is that constant spin ups for SMART data only puts a lot of unnecessary stress on the drives

  • Author
9 hours ago, Zonediver said:

 

Cant confirm this... I haven't seen this behavior yet.

Just to clarify, are you suggesting you can't confirm this because its not behavior you've ever heard of within the community, or just on your machine?

2 hours ago, nametaken_thisonetoo said:

as you can see with my logs, there is nothing else going on other than a spin up for a SMART data read.

Normal drive accesses like reads and writes aren't logged.

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